UNANNOUNCED spot-checks are to be used to assess whether older patients are being treated with dignity on Welsh hospital wards.
Health Minister, Lesley Griffiths, today charged Healthcare Inspectorate Wales (HIW) with carrying out the checks, three months after Ruth Marks, Wales’ Older People’s Commissioner, published a damning report revealing how many elderly patients had been stripped of their dignity while being treated in hospital.
The report, Dignified Care?, which was published in March, contained shocking examples of how older patients had been denied their basic human rights and received “shamefully inadequate†care in Welsh hospitals.